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We in the music press tend to lunge after impossible ideals like “the new Radiohead,” but in evasive Oxford quintet Foals it seems entirely possible that we might have a U.K. band similarly capable of straddling the twin peaks of critical acclaim and commercial acceptance on our hands.

No, it hasn’t happened across the board yet. With their latest album, Holy Fire, which made it as far as No. 2 on the U.K. album chart upon release this past February, Foals have nevertheless come precariously close to synthesizing the arch math-punk severity of their riveting 2008 debut, Antidotes, and the expansive ambition of 2010’s Total Life Forever into a thoughtfully funky and forward-thinking pop vision accessible enough for the masses.

The band certainly has no trouble selling itself through its live show, which is why it has upsized since Total Life Forever from boffo gigs at Lee’s Palace and the Phoenix to this Saturday’s hotly anticipated Holy Fire touchdown at Kool Haus. The Star spoke to frontman Yannis Philippakis earlier this week while he prepared for a gig in Boston.

Q:Foals have, in the past, admitted to being the sort of band that pathologically overthinks its every move. Was there any grand design pondered in the run-up to recording Holy Fire?

A: In some ways, we wanted to rough up the edges a little bit and loosen the process. We’d got to a point where everything was so kind of thought-out and thematic and harmonious on Total Life Forever that, if we’d done that again, we would have wound up making a record that was … well, it wasn’t the right way to go. We wanted to be more intuitive on this record and to allow the electricity in the room and the energy between the five of us to be the guiding force for the decision-making process. And discussions or analysis of the record, as much as possible, we basically tried to sidestep the brain at below the heart.

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Q:It does sound on Holy Fire like you rediscovered a visceral sense of groove that allowed you wiggle, strut and funk out a bit more easily.

A: That’s always been there. What happened on Total Life Forever a little bit was that the environment and being in Sweden and some of the decisions that we made while we were recording and the chemistry between us and the producer meant a lot of the slinkiness was bleached out in favour of having more space or nuance or ambience to everything. So it wasn’t so much us rediscovering it on this record as allowing it to the forefront or allowing it to be something that was just more physically preoccupied. We just started to fall in love again with grooves and jamming and the physicality of playing music with the five of us. It’s a very different process with the five of us than if I was, say, to make music on my own or we were to make music with other people, so I think we just kind of relished in it and had a confidence in the fact that that’s what we should be doing because that’s what comes most naturally to us. One thing that I definitely think informed everything, from writing to recording, is a confidence that was sometimes precarious before. We kind of feel now that we don’t need to analyze and erase bits of ourselves, and everything that comes from the chemistry of the band is a good thing. It’s not something to be ashamed of or censored in any way.

Q:It’s rare that one comes across a Foals review or interview that doesn’t at some point employ words like “brainy” or “intelligent” or “nerdy.” Has that reputation become a sort of albatross around your neck?

A: Fundamentally, we make pop music. We make accessible music. It’s not like Stockhausen. In some ways, it may be our albatross, but in some ways it may be more of a symbol of how dumbed-down things have got within contemporary music. If you show any kind of thought or articulation of what goes on within the band rather than it just being grunts, you get tarred as being nerdy and people are out to destroy your sex life by calling you a nerd. In reality, it’s just a symbol of how dumb stuff’s got. I’m not talking about pop music — pop music’s a different thing. But for me, guitar music and alternative music were always a haven for progressive thought or experimentalism married with something that should try to reach out and try to communicate and try to affect people’s lives, and what’s happened is that side of it has become equally uncool. It’s been replaced with this kind of ironic, wink-wink, knowing, arched-eyebrow kind of retro-facsimile and it’s just kind of a weird time to be making guitar music, I think. It’s a weird time to be trying to make music for your own generation.

Q:I was struck by your shift from purposefully obscurantist, cryptic lyrics to more obviously personal material on Holy Fire.

A: I was excited by the idea of trying to write these very simple, transparent, pared-down lyrics on this record and for them to be emotionally honest as much as that’s possible. But now that I’ve done it, I kind of want to do the opposite thing. I don’t want it to be personal or referential on the next album. I want it to be absurd and surreal and challenging. I don’t know whether it was a brave thing to do or the most stupid thing I’ve ever done, but it’s happened now so … I don’t know. It felt like it had to be that. I wasn’t excited about the idea of writing cryptic lyrics. It just wasn’t there for me, and what was there for me was wanting to give away bits of myself, to throw them away and throw them out and to feel like there was some value or almost some honour in doing that. I don’t know if it was right or not, but I feel like I definitely won’t do that again for the foreseeable future. Not because I’ve been burned by it or anything. This just happens a lot. We make a record and then we kind of swing to the polar extreme of what the last phase was, so I feel like the next record might be everything that this record wasn’t.

Q:Is there a storehouse of new Foals material ready to go for the next record, then?

A: No, not really. When we’re on tour, it’s not by design, but basically we don’t write. I think it’s actually good for us not to write because the pressure builds, the creative desire builds and builds, and the moment we stop touring it’s like an explosion of ideas that have been marinating for six months. Not having any outlet for them, I think, is actually a good thing. There’s a good thing in denying yourself for awhile.

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